Posted
by
timothy
on Friday September 07, 2012 @07:40PM
from the pyschopathic-narcissists-for-the-tie dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Election Analytics is a website developed by Dr. Sheldon Jacobson at the University of Illinois designed to predict the outcomes of the U.S. presidential and senatorial elections, based on reported polling data. From the site: 'The mathematical model employs Bayesian estimators that use available state poll results (at present, this is being taken from Rasmussen, Survey USA, and Quinnipiac, among others) to determine the probability that each presidential candidate will win each of the states (or the probability that each political party will win the Senate race in each state). These state-by-state probabilities are then used in a dynamic programming algorithm to determine a probability distribution for the number of Electoral College votes that each candidate will win in the 2012 presidential election. In the case of the Senate races, the individual state probabilities are used to determine the number of seats that each party will control.'" You can tweak the site by selecting a skew toward the Republican or Democratic tickets, and whether it's mild or strong. Right now, this tool shows the odds favor another four years for Obama, even with a strong swing for the Republicans.

BTW., Romney already lost because he is now trying to out-Obama Obama, out-Democrat the Democrats. How is that going to work at all? Clearly he is not a Democrat, if somebody wants to vote for Democrats they will vote for Obama.

My point is that the entire 'intellectual' debate of the Right is now: we are going to do a better job PROTECTING Medicare (and SS I guess) than Obama would.

What are you talking about? Romney is pretending to be more right-wing than he really is in order to appease core republican voters. The only reason he's the republican nominee is that many people in the GOP thought they needed a more moderate guy in order to beat Obama. Now that they have the guy it seems they are worried about their voter base, which is why Romney has drifted to the right and they nominated Tea Party darling Ryan as vice president.

As a raving fiscal conservative with liberatarian social leaning Utahn, i can affirmatively agree with what you said. Huntsman is one great guy who would have been the first republican presidential canidate I would have voted for.

What are you talking about? Romney is pretending to be more right-wing than he really is in order to appease core republican voters. The only reason he's the republican nominee is that many people in the GOP thought they needed a more moderate guy in order to beat Obama. Now that they have the guy it seems they are worried about their voter base, which is why Romney has drifted to the right and they nominated Tea Party darling Ryan as vice president.

The point is that once you get a Republican talking about Medicare and Social Security -- two major Democratic programs that nobody really believes Republicans support with any enthusiasm, he's on the losing side of the argument. Bringing up those programs is a giant mistake for any Republican who wants to get elected.

Paul Ryan's position on the ticket was more likely straight up bought with campaign dollars as he is totally loyal to a few specific billionaires who don' trust Romney's ties to Bain Capital, when it comes to cash Mitt just can't say no. Not only has Paul Ryan failed to garner any new support he has lost a swag of support especially amongst those who wanted Ron Paul (Ron Paul says what he believes right or wrong, Paul Ryan says what ever he is paid to say apart from the odd trip into pathological lying whe

I really don't know what Romney gives a damn about. It seems like he's been on both sides of every issue so who can tell what he believes?

I do know that he is surrounding himself with neocons and that is disconcerting. Without his own convictions he will just go along with whatever his advisers tell him. We are already hearing them beat the drums of war with regards to Iran.

I predict that if Romney gets elected we will see a repeat of the Bush years. There will be more unfunded wars. We'll see a loosening of regulations that are already too watered down. After the next banking bubble forms and bursts due to the lack of regulations, we will enter into another gilded age. We are already seeing the beginning of a gilded age now with the massive corruption in our government. The common people are no longer being represented. Only a few very rich individuals and powerful corporate powers control our government.

I totally agree with you. At times I feel like he is treating it like a video game. He doesn't really seem to care about what he has to do, as long as he can get the President of the United States Achievement unlocked. It's the total lack of empathy that I sense from him that really freaks me out. That's where I get that uncanny valley feeling from him — not because of his wooden delivery (which doesn't help).

You should really check this oft repeated mendacious claim. Obama used his very small window of opportunity to pass health-care reform. You should also look at some of the details of the bill yourself, instead of getting 3rd hand information from "four-legs-good, democrats bad" pundits.

I don't see how you can claim Obama is a clear winner. Look between the conventions - Obama gave a re-run, with no plan at all on how he plans to help anyone do anything. Just a lot of vague numbers like he has always given.

I don't see how you can claim Obama is a clear winner. Look between the conventions - Obama gave a re-run, with no plan at all on how he plans to help anyone do anything. Just a lot of vague numbers like he has always given.

Romney meanwhile, actually laid out a five point plan:

Do you understand the irony of your own post?

You start by saying Obama has no plan, then list Romney's plan and write in brackets how Obama's plan sucks in comparison.

THEN, you turn around and point out that folks here may not like Romney's plan but at least he has a plan. However, you don't apply the same standard to yourself.

I don't think a bad plan is necessarily better than no plan. Furthermore, I think it's better that Obama has plans rather than a simplistic list of bullet points that can be reduced to the size of a/. comment. Also, the more specific things a candidate insists they will do the less I believe them: the president rarely has the power to do the things most candidates claim they will do and their agenda should be fluid and open to compromise. So a presidential candidate with an impractical five point plan strikes me as a fool, a liar, or both.

Just for the sake of argument, since you accuse Obama of being vague:

1) What does promoting domestic energy entail? Giving large subsidies to oil companies so they can 'research' domestic energy opportunities? That's what it sounds like to me. Nice and vague.

2) Standing up to China . . . oh dear, he must be a fool. How does he intend on doing this? Very vague.

3a) What job training programs? Are they actually even worth a damn? Even if, is this something the government should be subsidizing?

3b) Stand up to teacher unions? Because those damn teachers are leaching all our tax money by making as much as factory workers. I guess they stand in the way of 'student choice' by politically opposing government subsidizing private and charter schools. Why, for a conservative, does Romney want to subsidize so many things? Also, how exactly does one blame teachers for the country's educational woes when statistics clearly show that the biggest deterrent one can have from receiving a quality education is simply being poor? In the same classroom, with the same teacher, the wealthier children will consistently outperform the poor children. But let's not look at 'vague numbers' - let's make vague accusations that imply that teachers in general are incompetent and greedy (make sure you ignore that unlike the majority of Americans, they're college educated and most could make more doing something else).

4) The deficit is hardly the scary monster everyone pretends it is. It's like college loans. You can't make them go away, they're a big scary negative number, but even if your wages get garnished they'll never really drive you to being destitute. So, even though on paper you really have less money (a large negative number) than the bum you pass everyday walking into the office (probably a smaller negative number - or maybe a positive one consisting of the sum of his change cup), you never envy the bum and you never consider him better off than you. In this case, Greece is the bum. Our debt is an inconvenience, their debt ruined them. That's because the number on paper is pretty irrelevant - it doesn't account for one's resources, it's not the be all, end all of one's worth. But it's easy to be vague and scary and behave like the graduate who's freaking out b/c they're a hundred grand in debt.

5) This is a vague way of saying: dog-eat-dog. Washington's regulatory climate does little to stifle small businesses. It's local regulation that stifles small businesses. Hell, the economy in general stifles small business. National regulation prevents banks from doing things like fraud. It prevents dirty industries from polluting the way Chinese factories do. Want more small businesses? Provide universal healthcare so people can afford to take the risk of starting a small business: As it stands, once a person gets a decent job with good benefits, he becomes scared to quit for the sake of a risk. Healthcare's like taxes: The middle class pays for most of it and it takes a huge chunk of their income. The rich pay more than anyone else, but a smaller percentage of their income than the middle class (basically, it's an inconvenience, the house isn't being put up for mortgage). The poor pay nothing. So, economically, it makes more sense to be a bartender that doesn't report most of his tips and receives welfare than to be a teacher. Make too much money, and all of a sudden you have to pay for health insurance (and co-pays) and now you technically

So lets look at jobs. How many jobs were created from 1/1/90 to 1/1/00? 22 million. How many jobs were created from 1/1/00 to 1/1/10? less than 0. How many jobs were created from 1/1/10 to the present day? 4.5 million. Even though the republicans gave away trillions of dollars to the rich and started two wars they could not conclude they had 0 jobs growth. Obama and Clinton started and concluded wars during their time with no loss of American life. Bush started two wars with over 5,000 American deaths and over a trillion dollars and failed to conclude either one. Bush had more time in Afghanistan to conclude that war than the amount of time Obama will have if reelected and his plan is carried out. Now lets talk about debt. Bush was responsible for over 6 trillion dollars in debt. When he left office the country was in the worst recession since the depression. So how much of Obama debt can the directly attributed to Bush. First he has to pay the interest for the 6 trillion dollars of Bush's debt. Second he has to pay for the unemployment insurance caused by Bush. Third he has to conclude both of Bush's wars. Fourth he has to do this with reduced income caused by Bush's great recession. Now lets go back 50 years to 1962. How many Americans have lost their life in foreign wars under republicans and how many under democrats? The republicans are so far in front of the democrats and yet you want another republican to be president.(hint over 16,000 dead in 1969 under Nixon).

IIRC the last president that presided over job growth greater than population growth was Carter. (If I am wrong, then it was Ford)

Romney vs Obama is sort of should we be screwed in 6 years (Romney) or 10 years (Obama). Sorry, I can't get excited about either one of them. The Clinton Reagan economic policies of the middle class subsidizing the very rich will continue under either of them, and the fight is about the less than important details.

You can't really do that because the economy was in free fall when it became Obama's responsibility. It's like having the copilot take over because the plane is in a nose dive and then when he pulls the plane out of the dive and levels off, you immediately blame the copilot for the loss of altitude. Much like a plane or a car, economic policy can't instantly change direction and speed, it has inertia (which a casino paradigm fails to acknowledge). However, if we count from the beginning of Obama's first major economic policy move (his stimulus bill), the U.S. has net positive job growth under Obama.

It's not great job growth, but respectable economists credit Obama's economic policies with preventing the loss of an additional million jobs (which likely would have occurred under McCain's stated policies) and recovering a million jobs lost under Bush's economic policies.

Some people consider that the employment issue might be larger than the United States and the President. Europe is in recession, China's economy is slowing, and the U.S. is muddling along. Some economists even blame the Republicans in congress for a large portion of the United States specific problem. The theory is that their intransigence is undermining business confidence in the United States and delaying economic investments. A cynical man might conclude that Republicans have a policy of defeating Obama no matter what and are perfectly willing to sacrifice average Americans if they think it might get them an inch closer to the White House. There's plenty of evidence to support such accusations, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's true.

It doesn't do you any good to create jobs if they are destroyed at a far greater rate. It really doesn't do you any good to create jobs that have no hope of growing the economy (government jobs only pull from the economy).

That's demonstrably false. Government jobs are jobs like any other. There's no difference between a government employee at a power plant and a private sector employee at a power plant. For example, Greece's economy ticked along quite well with far too many government employees.

The real problem with government jobs isn't that they don't grow the economy, it's that they are dependent on tax revenues and thus they can become an amplifying feedback into the system. Keynesian economics advocate running counter to the business cycles to minimize the troughs, however, Greece (and a number of other countries, including the U.S. under Bush) ended up running in synch with the business cycles, amplifying both the highs and the lows. This recovery is dragging along because foolish countries (like the U.S. and Greece) allowed themselves to accumulate so much debt during the good times, that they can't afford to spend to ameliorate the bad times.

For example, the stimulus spending tried to jump start a 14 trillion dollar economy with around $300 million in spending (plus $300 million in ineffective tax cuts (Republican) and $300 million in mandatory spending (Unemployment Insurance). Frankly, 2% of GDP is a probably a bit low to trigger a big economic recovery. I think the recommended amount is closer to 10%.

The entire plan can be summarized: Maximise profits by socializing the risksand costs. It's the Bush III plan.

* like granting unsupervised emminent domain power to a foreign corp(TransCanada) to take land so they can move highly toxic sludge that noone knows how to clean up (see "Enbridge") through the entire middle of ourcountry so they can ship it to other, foreign companies.

Are you being ignorant or dishonest here? Obama's energy policy is indistinguishable from Bush/Cheney's: "all of the above". Record new amounts of land and sea opened for drilling. Billions for nuclear power and perpetual motion machines, I mean, "clean coal". The eastern seaboard and coast near ANWR have been opened for drilling, something not even Bush tried to do.

Not blocking domestic energy production or things like the keystone pipeline. No subsidies required.

I ask again: are you speaking out of ignorance or dishonesty? Obama has approved the bottom half of the pipeline, which means he approves of the top half of the pipeline. The only "blocking" was a slight of hand for his liberal base, which of course was eaten up at DailySheep. They pointed to Obama's action as if he was blocking the pipeline, when his only disagreement was with the route. Same as when they hailed his veto thread of the NDAA and pretended that Obama was against military detention of American citizens, when he was of course demanding that power.

Expand the market for U.S. goods overseas by negotiating new trade agreements

Obama has signed three new trade agreements just like NAFTA.

Improve workforce skills by transferring job-training programs to the states

What the fuck is increasing supply (qualified workers) going to do to solve the actual problem (a lack of demand)?

going after teachers' unions, which, he says, stand in the way of school choice and better instruction

Sure, he says that. And he's lying. Where's your "school choice" going to be when Kaplan owns every charter school within a hundred miles of you? Do you conservative geniuses think about what killing teachers unions and public schools is going to do to quality affordable education?

You guys like to whine about lazy students being coddled, but what happens when said lazy student happens to be the son of Upstanding Business Owner and Member of the Community who happens to own a 15% stake in your charter school system and can get his teacher fired at the drop of his hat? How about when that rich kid turns into bully starts kicking the shit out of your kid?

Attack the deficit through budget cuts, not tax increases. (Obama clearly has the opposite idea here).

You mean "austerity" which has been a fucking disaster for every country that has tried it? The only entity capable of jump-starting demand in a depression is the government. Slashing government spending is only going to make that depression worse, far more so when your cuts target social social spending before the military-industrial-congressional-contractor-survellance complex.

Slashing spending results in a death spiral of a collapsing economy, which results in less tax revenues, which results in more demands from fools and tools to slash more spending. A vicious cycle that took Grover Norquist decades to perfect.

reshape the regulatory climate to "encourage and promote small business" rather than swamp it. (We have a metric ton more regulations now than when Obama entered office).

For the third time: are you speaking out of ignorance or dishonesty? Obama has cut or forestalled regulations, not brought new ones. Oh, and the lie about "small bushiness" don't hunt no more. We know perfectly well that when Republicans talk about "small businesses", what they really mean is a small number of shareholders. Which means Koch Industries is a "small business" because it is owned by the Koch family. Which means when Republ

Consider only the first one. All you have to do is get out of the way, OK things like the pipeline. That's all it takes for item (1) to happen and bring us a lot of home-brewed energy very quickly.

Closing Guantanamo should have been simple but it's not when you have to figure out where to put those guys and are not willing to kill them. It was pretty easy to forsee not one state would welcome housing them.

Nate Silver predicted Obama's win as far back as September in 2008 to within a few electoral votes. I am keeping an eye on him again this year....if he is accurate again then his model will have some strong validation.

You make jokes but I'm afraid that all the polls are forgetting one little thing that will most likely saying "President Romney"...shudder, next year and that is.....The Halo 4 effect.

For those that don't know Obama LOST most demographics in 08, it was the youth vote that put him over the top in many swing states. Well now after 4 years of watching him flip flop and kiss Wall Street ass the group that has lost the most faith in him and in voting in general? the youth voters. And guess what is released on th

"Right now, this tool shows the odds favor another four years for Obama, even with a strong swing for the Republicans."

I'm not surprised since the incumbent has a strong advantage and we have a weak opponent on the Republican ticket. It is next election when the Republicans will logically field a strong candidate as they'll have far better odds of winning.

Who's there with you? Or is this the royal "we" as in, "My maid was cleaning the silver with a paper towel and I had to explain to the wretched girl that we don't use paper towels on the silver here at the Romney house. I'm seriously thinking of sending her back to Ecuador."

The GOP base isn't going to come out to support Romney on Election Day, and he's not exciting enough independents to make up for it. Obama will be less of an electoral loser than Romney, and that will be good enough.

Several polls showed Dr Paul would do better against Obama than Romney (or any of the other names that were thrown around in the primaries.) He has pretty good appeal with independents and swing voters and Romney, obviously, doesnt..

Romney was the pick of the RNC and they got worried enough about the convention to show their hand and openly coronate him in Tampa. They went way over anything needed to ensure the nomination and openly wrote the state parties and the activist base out of having any real role i

I was all for Newt, and things were looking fairly good. Then he called out Romney for being "elitist" which I agreed with. Then all the elites dumped support for Newt and went all-in for Romney. So now the republicans are being funded by a small bunch of elitists who all want handouts (er tax cuts) and the dems are out of control with spending and mandated Obamacare. What's a guy to do?

All in all it's very hard not to think that the RNC must *really* want Obama to win his second term.

I've seen plausible arguments from serious (mostly liberal) commentators suggesting that a number of Republicans - especially the possible 2016 candidates - would prefer that Obama win, because they know that the economy is going to continue limping for the next four years, and continuing to blame Obama is much easier (and puts them in a much better position for 2016) than actually governing.

Ironically, those who supported Paul will be much better off if they simply don't vote at all and let Romney go down in flames. They they get to step in and take control of the republican party because of the failure of the establishment pick. Its sort of the same strategy as the republicans have been playing for the last four years against Obama. Trash the place, blame it on the guy left holding the bag and then prosper. Even more ironic is that Romney used the very same strategy at Bain to make his fo

Paul supports would do well to support Johnson, since it would boost the importance of outsiders, thereby giving them far more clout the next time around. Establishment types would have to actually take them seriously, just as democrats had to do with Nader, many of whose ideas became embedded in their subsequent platform.

A quote from Ronald Reagan: "I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience."

Just because someone is elderly does not mean that they are senile or ready to kick the bucket. Listen to Ron Paul speak about monetary policy sometime and just try to keep up with him. He's also physically very fit, going on long bike rides in the heat of Texas. Whether you otherwise think about a candidate and their positions, ignoring or laughing at them because of their age is just silly.

Shhh. That's not something that the Romney-backed media conglomerates want anyone talking openly about, lest it spoil the horse-race angle to the election. However, it is interesting and remains to be seen if Murdoch wisely uses this as a bargaining chip in renegotiating Roger Ailes salary and tenure at Fox, which is up this next month. The prospect of an Obama win would seriously diminish the gloss of another multi-year contract for Ailes, especially with aspects of the Hacker scandal as yet to be adjud

I am neither. I am a small business owner, and to me, Obama looks awful. Romney/Ryan looks decent in comparison, and will get my vote. I could say that Obama only looks good if you've never taken responsibility for your own financial wellbeing, but that might be disingenuous.

I'm a small business owner (C corp), and have taken responsibility for my financial well-being for almost two decades: my personal business is my sole source of income. Romney/Ryan would be a disaster for us.

Think it through. Health insurance is my largest line-item expense, and along with income security e.g. the ability to identify and win productive business contracts so that I can meet payroll is the greatest impediment to my hiring of additional workers. Romney/Ryan would do damage on both fronts, fi

Then again there is this one http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/23/university-of-colorado-prediction-model-points-to-big-romney-win/ that has been correct every time since 1980 that says Romney will win big.

Then again there is this one http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/23/university-of-colorado-prediction-model-points-to-big-romney-win/ that has been correct every time since 1980 that says Romney will win big.

That model is a joke. It didn't exist 6 months ago. Just look at it! PA for Romney? It's not even considered a battle-ground state anymore and the Romney campaign has pulled ALL advertising and has none scheduled.

This is the model that passed peer review despite not passing the smell test, right?Also the model that hasn't predicted anything yet? It simply correctly models past elections back to 1980. That's not quite the same thing.

A lot of it is also crap: The model for example claims a huge multiplier effect for unemployment ONLY for incumbent Dems, incumbent Reps are not affect by unemployment in this model.

Basically they threw bunch of crap of crap together , tweaked it until they got past elections correct... it also required them to be able to selectively dismiss 7 measurements from 8 elections

Is that supposed to make it credible? It's kind of like quoting Coke's criticism of Pepsi. Except of course that Silver's livelyhood depends on marketing himself, while the others are published and tenured university professors.

Did they predict all of those elections ahead of time? I'm guessing not, otherwise we would have heard about it sometime around 1992. If not, the fact that it produced the correct output for every election is actually a huge red flag. Elections are complicated things with many factors that are unique to a given election. You'd expect any model that can be written down on paper to be wrong at least some of the time because there's no way to account for everything.

Likely they just went data-dredging until they found a set of variables that correlate with the election winner. Problem is, there's usually *some* set of variables that correlate with the outcome for spurious reasons. The meal preferences of an octopus, for example. [wikipedia.org]

That model is far too simple. It only uses the economy and it only works since 1980. All the model says is "in bad economic times, people tend to vote out presidents." So, yeah, that model alone predicts a Romney landslide. However, in some bad economic times people tend to keep presidents, FDR for example, which is why they have to limit the poll to 1980. The polls alone show that that model is not currently a good fit for the current situation.

Oh please. Rasmussen is just another pollster that uses a different methodology, so it thus ends up with different results. In 2006, Republicans thought Rasmussen was biased because it said Republicans would lose. Later, democrats thought it was biased because it said they would lose. It's not biased, it's just different. Sometimes it's more right than other polls, sometimes less right.

Peh. The only reason why people throw a fit over Rasmussen is because they use only "likely voters" and don't use +measurement voting statistics like other polling houses have been doing for the last decade.

It's worth noting that this analysis includes data from Rasmussen, a pollster whose track record at predicting election outcomes is marred by a persistent, consistent bias. Not that they're faking the results (as some overtly partisan pollsters do), but their methodology appears to over-represent demographics that are more likely to vote Republican. According to one analysis, they overestimated votes for Republicans by 3.9%. Andrew Tanenbam's web site [electoral-vote.com] has a concise explanation of what's wrong with Rasmussen's numbers, and why he maintains a separate map that omits them from his own Electoral College projections. So if a system that includes Rasmussen data projects that a Democrat is going to win the presidency... that's a pretty strong indicator of which way the wind is blowing.

These algorithms aren't just going and computing an equally weighted average. In a data fusion task you can correct for some pretty extreme error terms if you can estimate them. If you understand what Rasmussen is doing and how it differs from everyone else then you can use that to your advantage.

It's an interesting model, but feeding a poll aggregate into a statistical prediction algorithm has been standard practice for years now. On the internet, fivethirtyeight [nytimes.com] is probably the first prominent site to have done so (originally as an independent site, before the NYTimes bought them).

So aside from being a visual disaster and not providing all of the background numbers, how is this different from what Nate Silver has been doing for the last four years? Okay, it allows you to assign a swing, but it's a lot more opaque and seems a lot less robust than what Silver has been doing over at fivethirtyeight.

is that he just said he doesn't think the troops are important [fark.com] and somehow he's still in the running. That's the kinda gaff that should've broke him. It's amazing what unlimited funds can do. Thanks Citizens United.

Romney: "When you give a speech you don't go through a laundry list, you talk about the things you think are important"

Not the best phrasing, but it's clear even to me as an Obama supporter that he means the speech was crafted to highlight points that would be advantageous to his campaign. The game of pretending your opponent meant something he clearly did not is not very persuasive to people not already on your side.

Look, I'm a Democrat and I'm fairly sure most Tea Partiers would call me a socialist, and even I can see that's not what Romney meant, any more than Obama meant "You didn't build your business." Romney's point, after he fumbled around for a few sentences, is that he said he was for a strong military, and that he sees supporting "the military" as being the same as supporting "the troops". That is an interesting in itself and debatable on several levels, but he clearly didn't intend to say that the troops w

One shows Romney by 1 and the other shows Obama by 3. The state breakdown is the most telling to me. The fact Romney has to win most all the swing states to win makes it a tough road for him. All Obama needs to win is Florida or there are several two state combos that make it an Obama win. It's going to be close but unless Trump digs up that mythical African birth certificate then it's likely an Obama win. The joke is the Congressional elections are far more important. If the Republicans win the house again it's likely 4 more years of gridlock. If they win both houses then Obama gets spoon fed Republican plans. The outlook is bleak no matter the results.

In the future, the United States has converted to an "electronic democracy" where the computer Multivac selects a single person to answer a number of questions. Multivac will then use the answers and other data to determine what the results of an election would be, avoiding the need for an actual election to be held.

The story centers around Norman Muller, the man chosen as "Voter of the Year" in 2008. Although the law requires him to accept the dubious honour, he is not sure that he wants the responsibility of representing the entire electorate, worrying that the result will be unfavorable and he will be blamed.

However, after 'voting', he is very proud that the citizens of the United States had, through him, "exercised once again their free, untrammeled franchise" - a statement that is somewhat ironic as the citizens didn't actually get to vote.

The idea of a computer predicting whom the electorate would vote for instead of actually holding an election was probably inspired by the UNIVAC I's correct prediction of the result of the 1952 election.

Polls are usually wrong by enough to matter in a close election. This is a close election and the margin of error is too great for the polls to predict anything except that we get to choose between a douche bag and a turd sandwich. That being said, I'm going with the turd sandwich who hasn't had a chance to mess things up yet.

A weak President (D) and a strong Congress (R). At least there is the impeachment hearings to look forward to. Republicans just finally get their wet dream of impeaching a democratic President. It's ok though. It works out for both parties. Republicans will validate their belief that Democrats are pro-crime and Democrats will validate their belief that Republicans are racist. You see, the problem is that you can't make TV for smart people anymore. Smart people find out too fast how to watch it for free. So you only get TV for dumb people. Impeachment hearing will cost tv studios zilch. Aah... I just love it when there is fun to be had.

Instead, consider "wasting" your vote in a different way: By voting for someone who isn't running on a major party ticket.

Maybe if enough people realize that their vote in their state isn't actually important when it comes to choosing the next president, they can cast a vote that says "the next next president shouldn't be a Republicrat". Only 6 states in the country aren't 90% in favor of one party or the other, and with the exception of florida, none of them really have much in the way of population. If you live in a 90% state, and were going to vote for the "lesser of two evils", why note vote for "neither of two evils". It'll make no more difference, but a much stronger statement.

waiting every 4 years to express your outrage at the system by voting for a zero-chance third party candidate for president is kinda retarded.

I completely agree with your sentiment... but if you want to build a viable third party you can't start at the top. This person will need a network of other party members spread throughout the rest of the system to effectively govern.

If you don't believe me, just look at the damn near unbelievable opposition that Obama has faced... and HE HAS ALLIES... just not as

If you don't believe me, just look at the damn near unbelievable opposition that Obama has faced... and HE HAS ALLIES... just not as many as the other guys. Now imagine your third party candidate SOMEHOW manages to get into office, and now faces bipartisan unified brick-wall of opposition.

I think after 4 more years of overriding law by executive order and administrative fiat, and with congressional favorability ratings in the single digits, we'll probably have a president that can govern by fiat, so opposition will be irrelevant.

Can't do that. Missouri's still a swing state and it's more important to vote against Republicans than it is for my favorite longshot third party to win, which they wouldn't thanks to how the system's set up.

You may not be able to vote if you live in a Republican state and your photo ID is older than 9 months or if your voter registration shows a middle initial but your ID card doesn't or your photo ID happened to expire yesterday, or you have the same name or a similarly spelled name or your photo ID is issued by one of the state universities or is a Veteran's Administration ID or if you're darker than a paper bag.

They take democracy seriously in those states and they want to protect it at all costs, even if it means several million legitimate citizens are unintentionally deprived of the right to vote.

Why is it people get upset at the suggestion of requiring an ID to exercise your right to vote, but no one is concerned that you need one to exercise your second amendment right?

I don't have any problem with requiring an ID, but if you're going to create a new requirement, you better have the infrastructure in place and do it in an orderly enough fashion that it doesn't disenfranchise millions of voters.

The case in Pennsylvania showed evidence of the better part of a million disenfranchised voters just in one state.

If they care about election fraud, why does it matter if the photo ID is expired? If it's my picture and my name and one doesn't have a period after the middle initial, should that disqualify me? If my ID is over 9 months old, why would that disqualify me if all they're trying to do is verify identity? And if the states that are putting these laws in place are serious, why the massive purging of voter lists? Why the closing of state offices where IDs can be obtained in poor neighborhoods? Why the limiting of hours of operation for those offices just before the election?

Sorry, pal, but this is going to be one big black mark on the political soul of the Republican Party. We have blatant voter suppression for the expressed purpose of keeping Democrats from voting (a state's atty in Pennsylvania actually admitted it on camera). You think that's OK?

The most excellent counterexamples were the democratically elected governments of England and France in the 30s. Because people had been misusing their votes for a while, the governments were cowardly and ineffective in the face of an existential threat, the growing power of the totalitarian states.

France, for example, was in a position to end the Second World War in 1936, by evicting Nazi Germany from the Rhineland after the latter moved troops in. They didn't and as a result somewhere around 100 millio

Using intrade properly looks like it would take bookie skills. I never have bothered to learn those.

I like the electoral vote predictor [electoral-vote.com]. Its comments show a definite blue bias, but there is no bias in its handling of poll data. It uses the last polls taken in each state for data.

At the moment what it shows is not necessarily representative of the country, since there have been very few polls done in the last week. But now that the conventions are over, I expect that there will be a lot of polling done, and electoral-vote.com will be as accurate as anyone can get.

(In theUSA) Did the candidate who spent more than the other candidate on their election campaign ever lose the election?

It's a common misconception that spending more money will increase a candidate's chances of winning an election, but it's just that - a misconception. If you don't have enough money to get your message out, then yes, that can mean a loss, but it rarely comes into play.

Yes, there have been plenty of races where the candidate that spent more lost the election. In fact, most studies show that increased spending by an incumbent can actually negatively affect their chance of winning.

There is an interesting discussion regarding this misconception over on Freakonomics [freakonomics.com].

The idea of something like this is to illustrate how different shifts would effect the result.

If you're a campaign for example, and you're trying to figure out how to win usually, tools like this will tell you which areas are still 'in play' and might be worth fighting in (spending your advertising dollars). The campaigns themselves almost certainly have huge amounts of data about what potential voters in each area care about, and how they're going to vote, but that analysis requires a large team of people to manage. This is more for people to play with relatively easily.

In that sense I'm not hugely fond of the tool, it's still a bit too complex for easy casual fiddling, and if I was a serious campaigner I'd likely have much more data to work from - the question becomes how easy is it to flip a particular state (the obvious ones from the charts are Iowa, Ohio, Florida, and Wisconsin ) rather than which would it be nice to flip. The democrats would like to pick up texas, the republicans California, but that doesn't seem likely.

I'm in canada, so it's a little different here, but in our last federal election the NDP managed to take themselves from 3rd party to official opposition essentially from one issue, in one province (French language stuff in quebec), in one stroke they pulled the rug out from one party (the bloc quebecois) - and picked up a lot of seats putting themselves ahead of one of our two big parties (the liberals). A real GOP strategist is looking at probably 4 -6 states and wondering if there's a major issue they can take a stance on an flip the whole state. The rest of us are just playing with sliders to wonder about what could happen.